Singapore’s crypto economy grew 55.4% year over year to $284 billion in the 12 months through June 2026, according to Chainalysis data cited by Cointelegraph. That performance put Singapore back in first place as the largest crypto economy across Central Asia, Southeast Asia and Oceania, even as the wider region shrank.
Singapore outpaced a declining regional market
Over the same period, total crypto activity across Central Asia, Southeast Asia and Oceania fell 6.8%, Chainalysis said.
The increase in Singapore was driven mainly by institutional platforms. Activity in that segment climbed 94% to $60 billion and was concentrated among a small number of market makers, over-the-counter trading firms and institutional brokers.
Growth came from larger trades on existing platforms
Chainalysis said the expansion in Singapore’s institutional ecosystem was highly concentrated. It showed up mostly in large-volume trading on established platforms, rather than in the arrival of many new services.
At the same time, Singapore has been tightening crypto oversight while continuing to push tokenization, stablecoins and digital asset settlement.
MAS tightened licensing rules while running pilots
In 2025, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, or MAS, required locally based crypto companies serving overseas clients to either obtain licenses or exit the market.
StraitsX CEO Tianwei Liu said the measure reduced speculative activity and increased the share of banks and large enterprises using blockchain in production.
MAS has also used its BLOOM program to run pilots involving compliant stablecoins and tokenized bank deposits. Ripple joined the initiative on March 25 to test cross-border trade settlement using RLUSD.
Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam stood out in small-value P2P transfers
Unlike Singapore’s institution-led growth, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam were notable for small-value peer-to-peer transfers.
Chainalysis said the three countries together recorded 5.4 million domestic and cross-border P2P transfers worth less than $10,000. Those transactions accounted for 14.4% of the global total for that category, but only 2.5% of the global crypto economy.